This issue of Progetto grafico, devoted to “Traces”—indices, markers, clues, imprints, and diagrams—explores visual communications that, rather than focusing on mere representation, deal with the dimension of time.First and foremost, traces have historical value: in any and every artifact, they take us back to the moment the object was thought up, revealing the reasoning and techniques by which it was produced. Oftentimes, they also reveal subjective choices and incidents during development that betray an underlying human factor in graphic design.Our individual and collective memories are a layering of narrative traces in constant transformation. Accumulated signs of use determine the identity of places and objects as well as texts, which can confront and converse with their own past in various ways.From the veins of a leaf to the path a pencil traces across a sheet of paper, all forms can be read as “space-time diagrams,” visual syntheses of a series of cause-and-effect relationships.New tools allow us to visualize the ebb and flow of digital traces in real time, as well as create dynamic representations of territories, activities, and experiences.

Raiders of the Lost TypeYoung designers are recovering extinct materials and technologies, bringing the vestiges of typographic civilization back to the future and making them a central part of the profession.

Francesco Olivucci: The First Step Toward a Partisan IconographyDuring the Nazi-Fascist occupation of Forlì a local artist contributed to the liberation effort by creating woodcuts for the underground press, ultimately laying the foundations for an aesthetic of the Italian Resistance.

Digital TracesSmartphones and other networked devices record digital traces on a daily basis, and their data can then be visualized in order to help us understand the phenomena taking place in the world around us.

Printing Effects and Inventive ErrorsFrom unintentional traces left by printing processes to deliberately sought-out design effects, three key “mistakes” have outlived the techniques that generated them to become part of our present-day visual language.

Questioning the Traces: Methodological Notes on the History of Graphic DesignWorks of graphic design leave behind many traces, both directly inscribed in the pieces themselves and scattered about by those involved in the processes of design, production, and reception. Such traces remain silent, however, unless they are actively explored, yielding further clues.

Anécdotomanie. Daniel Spoerri’s Topography of ChanceFrom 1962 onward, the evidence collected in Daniel Spoerri’s landmark book has triggered an ever-expanding chain of connections that inevitably involve its readers as well.

The Graphic Designer as Liberator of the Viewer(Or: The Socratic Exigency of Jan van Toorn)Jan van Toorn perpetually questions the way images are used, addressing the public with complex visual messages capable of rousing our criticality.

Punctuation: Traces of Interaction Between Author and ReaderFrom avant-garde experiments to contemporary usage, punctuation is often freed of its original function to become an expressive, iconographic material.

John Berger’s Political Views: A Reading of Ways of SeeingJohn Berger’s cult book is a cornerstone of visual culture. Few texts have so strongly shaped the eye of generations of art and design students, making the key ideas of twentieth-century philosophers more popular (and pop).